“And I didn’t lose a man, Doc!” he said long afterwards to his friend and admirer, the Exmouth doctor, the hard-working physician with whose long-suffering bell Leon had mischievously tampered. “I didn’t lose a man—only the vessel. When the gale blew down we had to take to the dories, for she was just washing to pieces under us. Too bad: she was an able vessel too! But I guess I’ll have to ‘take my medicine’ for the rest of my life—an’ take it limping!”—with a rueful smile.
But the many waters through which he had passed had not quenched in Captain Andy the chivalrous love for his human brothers. Rather did they baptize and freshen it until it sprouted anew, after he took up his residence ashore, in a paternal love for boys which kept his great heart youthful in his massive, sixty-year-old body; and which kept him hopefully dreaming, too, of deeds that shall be done by the sons now being reared for Uncle Sam, that shall rival or outshine the knightly feats of their fathers both on land and sea.
So he smiled happily, this grand old sea-scout, as, on the occasion of the first meeting for the inauguration of the Boy Scout Movement, he heaved his powerful frame into a seat beside his friend the doctor who was equally interested in the new doings.
“Hi there, Doc!” said Captain Andy joyously, laying his hand, big and warm as a tea-kettle, on the doctor’s arm, “we’re launching a new boat for the boys to-night, eh? Seems to me that it’s an able craft too—this new movement—intended to keep the lads goin’ ahead under all the sail they can carry, and on a course where they’ll get the benefit of the best breezes, too.”
“That’s how it strikes me,” returned the doctor. “If it will only keep Starrie Chase, as they call him, sailing in an opposite direction to my doorbell, I’m sure I shall bless it! D’you know, Andy,” the gray-bearded physician addressed the weatherbeaten sea-fighter beside him as he had done when they were schoolboys together, “when I heard how that boy Leon had sprained his ankle badly in the woods and that the family had sent for me, I said: ‘Serve him right! Let him be tied by the leg for a while and meditate on the mischief of his ways; I’m not going to see him!’ Of course, before the words were well out, I had picked up my bag and was on my way to the Chase homestead!”
“Of course you were!” Captain Andy beamed upon his friend until his large face with its coating of ruddy tan flamed like an aurora borealis under the electric lights of the little town hall in which the first boy scout meeting was held. “Trust you, Doc!”
The ex-skipper knew that no man of his acquaintance lived up to the twelve points of the scout law in more thorough fashion than did this country doctor, who never by day or night closed his ears against the call of distress.
“I’ll say this much for the young rascal, he was ashamed to see me bring out my bandages”; the doctor now nodded humorously in the direction of Leon Chase, who made one of a semicircle composed of Nixon, himself and six other boys, at present seated round the young scoutmaster whom they had chosen to be leader of the new movement in their town.
“But by and by his tongue loosened somewhat,” went on the grizzled medical man, “and he began to take me into his confidence about the formation of this boy scout patrol; he seemed more taken up with that than with what he called ‘the thunderstorm in his ankle.’ Leon isn’t one to knuckle under much to pain, anyhow! Somehow, as he talked, I began to feel as if we hadn’t been properly facing the problem of our boys in and about this town, Andy.”
“I see what you mean!” Captain Andrew nodded. “Leon is as full of tricks as a tide rip in a gale o’ wind. An’ that’s the most mischievous thing I know!” with a reminiscent chuckle. “But what can you do? If a boy is chockfull o’ bubbling energy that’s going round an’ round in a whirl inside him, like the rip, it’s bound to boil over in mischief, if there ain’t a deep channel to draw it off.”